Websites you may find helpful
The most significant body on the science on climate change is the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). They have collated most of the important science on the subject under three 'Working Groups'. Working Group I (WGI) is the more important one from the perspective of climate science. WGI is 'The Physical Science Basis'. WGII is 'Impacts, Adaptation and Vulnerability' and WGIII is 'Mitigation of Climate Change'. All of the reports and more can be downloaded free from the IPCC website. There is also the Synthesis Report (SYR) which integrates the three working groups. It can be downloaded here. There are two small problems with the IPCC, however: First, because of the long process involved in collating all the material, by the time the reports come out they are several years old. Second, they have to go through lengthy 'revision' by various UN and government committees. This means they end up being pretty conservative on the whole. But remember that because of this, the information in the reports is very reliable. Also remember that the IPCC does not do any science itself (despite what some of the anti-science sites might claim). It collates the work done by literally thousands of scientists all around the world.
Climate science is a rapidly evolving science with new detail being published every week. The world's two main science journals are Nature published by Macmillan in the UK and Science, published by the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS). Here are links to their websites:
Nature and its more specialised magazine Nature Climate Change both of which generally require a subscription, and Nature Communications which is an 'open access' journal with a lot of interesting material, including climate articles.
Science and its 'open access' companion Science Advances.
Science, Nature and Nature Communications have all sorts of scientific material. Nature Climate Change is the only specialised magazine. While Nature and Science are primarily subscription magazines, they do publish the abstracts of all the articles (and sometimes the whole articles) on their websites. There are of course many other specialised science journals which report on climate science but we can't list them all here.
The web is a great resource, but unfortunately has no guarantee of reliability or honesty. There are a lot of sites out there pushing the anti-science lines that climate change is 'natural', 'not human caused', or 'doesn't matter'. Hopefully if you look at those you will come back here and check out some of their claims. If you find any serious ones that are not answered here, please let me know! (Email link below.) But please don't tell me it is all a UN conspiracy!
Fortunately there are a lot of reliable sources of information on climate science! The more reliable ones are often associated with universities, science academies or scientific organisations such as the CSIRO (well it used to be!!) and the Bureau of Meteorology. Be wary of 'blogs' which are often just echo chambers for people trying to convince themselves that climate change it is not a problem. You can often distinguish them by the somewhat hysterical language they use - or their absurd claims that somehow all the scientists have got together and created some sort of 'conspiracy'. That is so ridiculous it would be laughable if it wasn't such a serious a matter. Science, as we have said, is based on healthy scepticism - and is totally opposed to any conspiring!
Here is a short list of some of the more reliable sources of good information about climate science:
Skeptical Science is a great compendium of information about climate science and in particular, answers to many of the questions sceptics have.
The Royal Society of the UK have an excellent website covering of lot of the science of climate change as well as a very good downloadable booklet
If you are looking for serious science from real climate scientists go to Real Climate
Our own CSIRO and the Bureau of Meteorology both have excellent material on climate change including a very good downloadable booklet.
The Australian Academy of Science has an excellent booklet called The Science of Climate Change - Questions and Answers
For the latest graphs of global temperatures go to NASA or NOAA (USA) or MET Hadley (UK)
Good fact check website: In a website called Climate Feedback scientists analyse articles published in the media and score them from Very high reliability to very low reliability. It is a great way to check some of the weird and wonderful things you might read about climate change - particularly in the Murdoch media.
Climate science is a rapidly evolving science with new detail being published every week. The world's two main science journals are Nature published by Macmillan in the UK and Science, published by the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS). Here are links to their websites:
Nature and its more specialised magazine Nature Climate Change both of which generally require a subscription, and Nature Communications which is an 'open access' journal with a lot of interesting material, including climate articles.
Science and its 'open access' companion Science Advances.
Science, Nature and Nature Communications have all sorts of scientific material. Nature Climate Change is the only specialised magazine. While Nature and Science are primarily subscription magazines, they do publish the abstracts of all the articles (and sometimes the whole articles) on their websites. There are of course many other specialised science journals which report on climate science but we can't list them all here.
The web is a great resource, but unfortunately has no guarantee of reliability or honesty. There are a lot of sites out there pushing the anti-science lines that climate change is 'natural', 'not human caused', or 'doesn't matter'. Hopefully if you look at those you will come back here and check out some of their claims. If you find any serious ones that are not answered here, please let me know! (Email link below.) But please don't tell me it is all a UN conspiracy!
Fortunately there are a lot of reliable sources of information on climate science! The more reliable ones are often associated with universities, science academies or scientific organisations such as the CSIRO (well it used to be!!) and the Bureau of Meteorology. Be wary of 'blogs' which are often just echo chambers for people trying to convince themselves that climate change it is not a problem. You can often distinguish them by the somewhat hysterical language they use - or their absurd claims that somehow all the scientists have got together and created some sort of 'conspiracy'. That is so ridiculous it would be laughable if it wasn't such a serious a matter. Science, as we have said, is based on healthy scepticism - and is totally opposed to any conspiring!
Here is a short list of some of the more reliable sources of good information about climate science:
Skeptical Science is a great compendium of information about climate science and in particular, answers to many of the questions sceptics have.
The Royal Society of the UK have an excellent website covering of lot of the science of climate change as well as a very good downloadable booklet
If you are looking for serious science from real climate scientists go to Real Climate
Our own CSIRO and the Bureau of Meteorology both have excellent material on climate change including a very good downloadable booklet.
The Australian Academy of Science has an excellent booklet called The Science of Climate Change - Questions and Answers
For the latest graphs of global temperatures go to NASA or NOAA (USA) or MET Hadley (UK)
Good fact check website: In a website called Climate Feedback scientists analyse articles published in the media and score them from Very high reliability to very low reliability. It is a great way to check some of the weird and wonderful things you might read about climate change - particularly in the Murdoch media.
For Science Teachers, Humanists and Probus people
Here is the link to the recent Probus talk (Jan 2025) The Climate is Changing, Why aren't We - This has added material on the pros and cons of nuclear.
Here is the link to the Victorian Humanist presentation on The Climate is Changing, Why aren't We?
Here is the link to the VicPhysics Feb 2024 conference presentation on Climate Change in Education
The following is the link to the 2023 STAV & VicPhysics conferences 'How do we talk to our students about climate change'.
Click here to download a Climate Science presentation which contains quite a bit of additional content on the science of climate change (2023, but this will be updated soon).
And Click this to download the article from 21 Oct 2022 Science Magazine: 'Science, misinformation, and the role of education'
And click this to download the Probus presentation (2023).
Here is the link to the Victorian Humanist presentation on The Climate is Changing, Why aren't We?
Here is the link to the VicPhysics Feb 2024 conference presentation on Climate Change in Education
The following is the link to the 2023 STAV & VicPhysics conferences 'How do we talk to our students about climate change'.
Click here to download a Climate Science presentation which contains quite a bit of additional content on the science of climate change (2023, but this will be updated soon).
And Click this to download the article from 21 Oct 2022 Science Magazine: 'Science, misinformation, and the role of education'
And click this to download the Probus presentation (2023).
References
The numbers refer to links in the Climate pages as [Ref.x] Many of the references are to subscription only articles, however most will allow access to at least the Abstract of the article.
[1] Robust warming projections despite the recent hiatus Matthew H. England, et.al. Nature Climate Change 5, 394–396 (2015) doi:10.1038/nclimate2575
[2] Observational constraints on mixed-phase clouds imply higher climate sensitivity Ivy Tan, Trude Storelvmo, Mark D. Zelinka Science 8 April 2016 (AAAS)
[1] Robust warming projections despite the recent hiatus Matthew H. England, et.al. Nature Climate Change 5, 394–396 (2015) doi:10.1038/nclimate2575
[2] Observational constraints on mixed-phase clouds imply higher climate sensitivity Ivy Tan, Trude Storelvmo, Mark D. Zelinka Science 8 April 2016 (AAAS)